posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
Newtonian is used to describe theories and approaches within physics not genetics. There is nothing inherently "newtonian" about genetics.

---

quote:

---

Obviously you believe that the origin of life lay outside the "material" universe

---

quote:

---

is never going to find the answers in a purely materialist model of the universe.

---

quote:

---

because in your view "science" as in "materialist science"

---

quote:

---

But scientists trying to find the origins of life are not necessarily "materialists" or even "darwinists" in trying to find the origin of life within the physical sciences (or as you call it natural science or nature).

---

Notice how Doug is lying about what is going on in mainstream science. He's trying to make it seem like they are just trying to find answers using the materialist approach, implying there is an ideological detachment from the results. Doug must not know what a worldview is. The whole point of the Newtonian worldview is to prematurely model the world as being comprised of certain types of substances (and not others), only certain types of phenomena (and not others), only certain types of outcomes (and not others), only certain types of biological organs (and not others), only some possible origins of life (and not others), only certain types of interactions (and not others), etc. Of course this makes you a materialist. That is the definition of materialism. But notice how Doug is trying to lie about what's going on. According to him, adopting this outlook does not involve the rest of the ideological baggage I've just mentioned. Mainstream science is just casually trying out a new model without being ideologically committed to it

And again, Doug is completely on his own here. Notice how Doug is never posting any relevant sources (the quotes he does post are generally irrelevant to the points of contention). Mainstream scientific institutions will tell you they are operating within the Newtonian worldview, and that they're committed to it. You'd think that would settle it, but Doug, being the ideologue he is, will just continue to change his points slightly just to keep himself in the conversation in spite of his silent concessions. How is that not trolling?

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
Obviously you believe that the origin of life lay outside the "material" universe

---

quote:

---

is never going to find the answers in a purely materialist model of the universe.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
That's exactly what I'm saying. And you're too incompetent to challenge me on that, as we've seen over several thread pages. So your whole reason of being in this thread is for nothing. Why are you even here? You can't challenge me on anything. You're not saying anything productive. What is your point?

---

Posts: 43015 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Science vs. Pseudoscience

A conflict between “science” and “pseudoscience” is now playing out on the national stage, including in the Huffington Post. The conversation is long overdue. I speak of the recent flap surrounding two TED lectures on the nature of consciousness — by Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock — that were initially removed from YouTube because TED’s scientific curators deemed them “pseudoscience.” The move generated strong reaction from TED’s normally doting followers.

Sheldrake’s and Graham’s offense: proposing the unorthodox view that consciousness is nonlocal.

---

quote:

---

Reply to Chris Anderson, TED and the TED Community: We’re Halfway There, But...

...

I am actually thankful to TED for in some way what happened with this whole incident is bringing out some long-simmering issues in the scientific community, what is legitimate science at least as science is practiced today, how science may evolve, and other related issues; and also, and this is relevant to TED’s apparent policies (I say apparent because it is not clear to me how the decision to remove the talks was reached and who was involved) how groups of self-appointed zealots are taking upon themselves to use labels and aggressive language to discredit what may after all turn out to be legitimate science. I won’t repeat what many others already pointed out but science is evolving because of the change of the paradigms not by defending existing views. The latter, belongs to the realm of dogmatic belief systems.

Using terms like “goofballs” and “pseudo-science” doesn’t really address the real issues at hand. There are so-called “scientists” who use these terms to promote their own cherished views and I am afraid, dogmas. Who is pseudo-scientist after all?

Someone who is trying to expand the horizons of science and is doing research at the intersection of different fields? If that is the case, then anyone doing research in consciousness, its relationship with fields like physics and psychology, and yes, neuroscience, should be labeled pseudo-scientist.

Or someone who has other agendas and using anonymity and labeling others, promotes his or her agenda? If that is the case, I submit to you, this is not science. Such attacks by so-called skeptics have been used at some universities to weed out unwelcome views (in the minds of the skeptics) and in the process adversely impact the careers of colleagues. We scientists are skeptics by the nature of inquiry but we should not use the methods of the self-labeled “skeptics”.

Such methods belong to the history of some religious past to shut up “heretic” views. Today “defenders of the faith” don’t burn heretics at the stake, they label them and try to exclude their views.

Science advances by dialogue, inquiry and exchange of ideas. Today dialogue is even more important than in the past, the community problems and issues that science is facing need the best of minds, and hearts, to come together. Science and philosophy, science and metaphysics, are complementary activities. Fields like global climate, neuroscience and consciousness and even quantum field theory, advance through intersection of ideas and methodologies, not by censorship.

I am a quantum physicist, cosmologist and Earth scientist, so I know these issues. We are now facing a grand revolution in scientific thought, through the dialogue between quantum theory, consciousness work, biology, and philosophy and psychology. TED has a great opportunity to help advance this transformation. I hope you do.

Menas C. Kafatos

Fletcher Jones Professor of Computational Physics
Chapman University
Orange, CA

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

One interesting book I've been eyeing for years. Haven't read it yet.

quote:

---

Some scholars, notably philosopher Thomas Nagel, are so unimpressed with science that they are challenging its fundamental assumptions. In his new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Nagel contends that current scientific theories and methods can't account for the emergence of life in general and one bipedal, big-brained species in particular. To solve these problems, Nagel asserts, science needs "a major conceptual revolution," as radical as those precipitated by heliocentrism, evolution and relativity.

...

Evolutionary psychologists invoke natural selection to explain humanity's remarkable attributes, but only in a hand-wavy, retrospective fashion, according to Nagel. A genuine theory of everything, he suggests, should make sense of the extraordinary fact that the universe "is waking up and becoming aware of itself." In other words, the theory should show that life, mind, morality and reason were not only possible but even inevitable, latent in the cosmos from its explosive inception. Nagel admits he has no idea what form such a theory would take; his goal is to point out how far current science is from achieving it.

...

Nagel acknowledges that his attempt to envision a more expansive scientific paradigm is "far too unimaginative." He might have produced a more compelling work if he had ranged more widely in his survey of alternatives to materialist dogma. For example, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman has postulated the existence of a new force that counteracts the universal drift toward disorder decreed by the second law of thermodynamics. Kauffman suspects that this anti-entropy force might account for the emergence and evolution of life. Nagel mentions Kauffman's theory of "self-organization" in a footnote but doesn't elaborate on it. (I critiqued the field of complexity research in a recent column.)

...

Nagel touches briefly on free will, when he suggests that our moral and aesthetic choices cannot be reduced to physical processes, but I expected a deeper treatment of the topic. Many leading scientists, from Francis Crick to Hawking, have argued that free will is an illusion, as much so as God and ghosts. This perspective, it seems to me, stems from a cramped, hyper-reductive view of causality, which I wish Nagel had opposed more vigorously.

These qualms asides, I recommend Nagel's book, which serves as a much-needed counterweight to the smug, know-it-all stance of many modern scientists. Hawking and Krauss both claim that science has rendered philosophy obsolete. Actually, now more than ever we need philosophers, especially skeptics like Socrates, Descartes, Thomas Kuhn and Nagel, who seek to prevent us from becoming trapped in the cave of our beliefs.

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
Why would an oak tree having surprisingly similar DNA to a man which imply that life is exceedingly old?

---

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

The Hubris of Holism

By Victor Stenger

A major contrast between religious or spiritual thinking and science concerns whether or not physical phenomena can simply be reduced to the sum of their parts. Basic physics, as described by the standard model of elementary particles and forces, is fully reductionist. This notion sticks in the craw of those who see themselves as part of a great, integrated whole.

In the scientific view, evolution reduces to a series of events that are local in space and time — individual mutations that are passed on to the next generation. In the religious view, every event is part of grand scheme that applies holistically, under divine guidance, to the whole system from bacteria to humans and from billions of years in the past to the present and indefinite future. In the scientific view, physical events also reduce to a series of events local in space and time — collisions between subatomic particles such as electrons and photons. In the view of quantum spiritualists, subatomic events are part of a grand scheme that applies holistically to every particle from an electron in a french fry at McDonald’s to a photon in the cosmic background radiation billions of light-years away and billions of years in the past.

The conventional reductionist picture envisages a series of levels of matter. From elementary particles (or strings, or whatever is the most elementary) we move to the nuclei of atoms, then to the atoms themselves and the molecules that are composed of atoms. While only on the order of a hundred distinguishable atoms exist, the number of molecules is endless — especially the huge structures built around carbon that form the ingredients of life and our fossil fuels, as well as many synthetic materials from plastics to polyesters.

The objects of our everyday experience are composed of molecules. Living organisms are an important component at this level, at least to us living organisms. How important they are on a cosmic scale is more dubious. Humans organize themselves into societies, so we can regard social systems — politics, and economics — as a yet higher level of material existence. Beyond that we have on Earth and its complex environment, the solar system, our galaxy, other galaxies, and whatever else is out there such as black holes, the cosmic background radiation, dark matter, dark energy, and other universes.

Now it should be obvious that an elementary particle physicist cannot take her equations and produce a derivation of every physical property we observe. She cannot calculate the structure of DNA from “first principles” or predict the stock market (though some have tried). At every level of matter from the smallest bodies to the largest we have specialists developing the principles that apply at that level by applying the time-honored methods of science — observation, model building, and hypothesis testing. These principles are said to “emerge” from the level below. But the fact that we cannot derive everything from particle physics does not mean that the universe still isn’t just a collection of particles.

Classical physics was reductionist. While direct proof of the existence of atoms was not found until the twentieth century, Newtonian mechanics was able to describe all of the behavior of macroscopic material systems — gases, liquids, and solids — in terms of the motions of their parts. The emergent principles of thermodynamics, which were introduced to describe macroscopic systems such as steam engines and refrigerators, were eventually derived from the submicroscopic atomic theory of matter.

New Age spiritualists and Christian apologists have appropriated quantum mechanics to claim a more holistic picture of nature. However, quantum mechanics and, as mentioned, the standard model of particles and forces, are fully reductionist. The standard model has agreed with all the data gathered at particle accelerators since the 1970s and is only now being seriously tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. Discoveries at the LHC are unlikely to change the general reductionist scheme.

In short, reductionism in physics remains consistent with all the data. It isn’t defeated just by the fact that it can’t derive everything that happens. It still works. Holism has no evidentiary support. It doesn’t work. Holism is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of those who have the hubris to think that they are an important part of some cosmic plan.

---

quote:

---

The best example may be the research area that goes by the name “quantum simulations.” These are systems composed of interacting, composite objects, like clouds of atoms. Physicists manipulate the interactions among these objects so the system resembles an interaction among more fundamental particles. For example, in circuit quantum electrodynamics, researchers use tiny superconducting circuits to simulate atoms, and then study how these artificial atoms interact with photons. Or in a lab in Munich, physicists use a superfluid of ultra-cold atoms to settle the debate over whether Higgs-like particles can exist in two dimensions of space (the answer is yes).

These simulations are not only useful to overcome mathematical hurdles in theories we already know. We can also use them to explore consequences of new theories that haven’t been studied before and whose relevance we don’t yet know.

This is particularly interesting when it comes to the quantum behavior of space and time itself — an area where we still don’t have a good theory. In a recent experiment, for example, Raymond Laflamme, a physicist at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and his group used a quantum simulation to study so-called spin networks, structures that, in some theories, constitute the fundamental fabric of space-time. And Gia Dvali, a physicist at the University of Munich, has proposed a way to simulate the information processing of black holes with ultracold atom gases.
...
In addition, physicists have studied hypothetical fundamental particles by observing stand-ins called quasiparticles. These quasiparticles behave like fundamental particles, but they emerge from the collective movement of many other particles. Understanding their properties allows us to learn more about their behavior, and thereby might also to help us find ways of observing the real thing.

This line of research raises some big questions. First of all, if we can simulate what we now believe to be fundamental by using composite quasiparticles, then maybe what we currently think of as fundamental — space and time and the 25 particles that make up the Standard Model of particle physics — is made up of an underlying structure, too. Quantum simulations also make us wonder what it means to explain the behavior of a system to begin with. Does observing, measuring, and making a prediction by use of a simplified version of a system amount to an explanation?

But for me, the most interesting aspect of this development is that it ultimately changes how we do physics. With quantum simulations, the mathematical model is of secondary relevance. We currently use the math to identify a suitable system because the math tells us what properties we should look for. But that’s not, strictly speaking, necessary. Maybe, over the course of time, experimentalists will just learn which system maps to which other system, as they have learned which system maps to which math. Perhaps one day, rather than doing calculations, we will just use observations of simplified systems to make predictions.

At present, I am sure, most of my colleagues would be appalled by this future vision. But in my mind, building a simplified model of a system in the laboratory is conceptually not so different from what physicists have been doing for centuries: writing down simplified models of physical systems in the language of mathematics.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos’

This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False,” which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument.

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.

...

There are two ways of resisting this conclusion, each of which has two versions. The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, either (a) by holding that the mental can be identified with some aspect of the physical, such as patterns of behavior or patterns of neural activity, or (b) by denying that the mental is part of reality at all, being some kind of illusion (but then, illusion to whom?). The second way is to deny that the mental requires a scientific explanation through some new conception of the natural order, because either (c) we can regard it as a mere fluke or accident, an unexplained extra property of certain physical organisms – or else (d) we can believe that it has an explanation, but one that belongs not to science but to theology, in other words that mind has been added to the physical world in the course of evolution by divine intervention.

All four of these positions have their adherents. I believe the wide popularity among philosophers and scientists of (a), the outlook of psychophysical reductionism, is due not only to the great prestige of the physical sciences but to the feeling that this is the best defense against the dreaded (d), the theistic interventionist outlook. But someone who finds (a) and (b) self-evidently false and (c) completely implausible need not accept (d), because a scientific understanding of nature need not be limited to a physical theory of the objective spatio-temporal order. It makes sense to seek an expanded form of understanding that includes the mental but that is still scientific — i.e. still a theory of the immanent order of nature.
...

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
One interesting book I've been eyeing for years. Haven't read it yet.

quote:

---

Some scholars, notably philosopher Thomas Nagel, are so unimpressed with science that they are challenging its fundamental assumptions. In his new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Nagel contends that current scientific theories and methods can't account for the emergence of life in general and one bipedal, big-brained species in particular. To solve these problems, Nagel asserts, science needs "a major conceptual revolution," as radical as those precipitated by heliocentrism, evolution and relativity.

...

Evolutionary psychologists invoke natural selection to explain humanity's remarkable attributes, but only in a hand-wavy, retrospective fashion, according to Nagel. A genuine theory of everything, he suggests, should make sense of the extraordinary fact that the universe "is waking up and becoming aware of itself." In other words, the theory should show that life, mind, morality and reason were not only possible but even inevitable, latent in the cosmos from its explosive inception. Nagel admits he has no idea what form such a theory would take; his goal is to point out how far current science is from achieving it.

...

Nagel acknowledges that his attempt to envision a more expansive scientific paradigm is "far too unimaginative." He might have produced a more compelling work if he had ranged more widely in his survey of alternatives to materialist dogma. For example, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman has postulated the existence of a new force that counteracts the universal drift toward disorder decreed by the second law of thermodynamics. Kauffman suspects that this anti-entropy force might account for the emergence and evolution of life. Nagel mentions Kauffman's theory of "self-organization" in a footnote but doesn't elaborate on it. (I critiqued the field of complexity research in a recent column.)

...

Nagel touches briefly on free will, when he suggests that our moral and aesthetic choices cannot be reduced to physical processes, but I expected a deeper treatment of the topic. Many leading scientists, from Francis Crick to Hawking, have argued that free will is an illusion, as much so as God and ghosts. This perspective, it seems to me, stems from a cramped, hyper-reductive view of causality, which I wish Nagel had opposed more vigorously.

These qualms asides, I recommend Nagel's book, which serves as a much-needed counterweight to the smug, know-it-all stance of many modern scientists. Hawking and Krauss both claim that science has rendered philosophy obsolete. Actually, now more than ever we need philosophers, especially skeptics like Socrates, Descartes, Thomas Kuhn and Nagel, who seek to prevent us from becoming trapped in the cave of our beliefs.

---

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-scientific-materialism-almost-certainly-false/

---

Posts: 1900 | From: NY | Registered: Sep 2014  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, either (a) by holding that the mental can be identified with some aspect of the physical, such as patterns of behavior or patterns of neural activity, or (b) by denying that the mental is part of reality at all, being some kind of illusion (but then, illusion to whom?).

---

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours
with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even
in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better
adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty
in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic
in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was
produced as monstrous as a whale.
--Charles Darwin

---

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by sam p:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, either (a) by holding that the mental can be identified with some aspect of the physical, such as patterns of behavior or patterns of neural activity, or (b) by denying that the mental is part of reality at all, being some kind of illusion (but then, illusion to whom?).

---

I have a theory of everything that answers everything but appeases no one.

There is simply no such thing as "intelligence" and our perception, our very thought, is merely an "illusion" created by modern language. We have consciousness like all life but on earth only humans have a symbolic and complex language. Up until about 2000 BC humans had a complex and representative language that was caused by and a result of its close ties to the wiring of the brain. By nature this language reflected all human knowledge and as human knowledge expanded the language became overly complex and failed; people simply couldn't manipulate it so one by one they switched to a pidgin form like ours that employed the same vocabulary. Words came to symbolize things and people became a product of our beliefs.

This is critical to understanding human nature or most nature because from the perspective of beliefs (and particularly the belief humans are intelligent) it is difficult to see human nature and change in species.

It is virtually impossible to see our own vast ignorance when we see only what we believe. If we didn't have an explanation for something we wouldn't see it at all.

From this perspective the "laws of nature" simply disappear and instead they become part of the logic by which reality unfolds but all of this logic occurs for every event and every change. Mathematics itself becomes just a quantified form of this logic that is removed from reality and manipulated by people. If everything is unique then it follows there is no such thing as adding 1 and one to get a couple.

I believe this theory will be "proven" in the not very distant future. It will show us a new way to view reality and a another way to study it that is like other animals but processed by computers.

I believe that what really sets humans apart is that since 2000 BC we experience consciousness in a different way than other animals. There were no words for "thought", "belief", or "opinion" in ancient language because these terms had no referent in consciousness. From this perspective change in species looks very different. From this perspective everything looks much different.

---

I don't understand all of it. Will read it a couple times over. But do you have some concrete things, such as archaeology to make it more tangible? The closest thing I can think of, that resembles your view is the biblical concept of the confusion of tongues at Babel, which the bible places at ~2300BC according to Ussher (close to your date of 2000BC). Although I doubt that's what you're referring to, since it's not an exact match. But you do seem to be talking about a common language before 2000BC.

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
I don't understand all of it. Will read it a couple times over. But do you have some concrete things, such as archaeology to make it more tangible? The closest thing I can think of, that resembles your view is the biblical concept of the confusion of tongues at Babel, which the bible places at ~2300BC according to Ussher (close to your date of 2000BC). Although I doubt that's what you're referring to, since it's not an exact match. But you do seem to be talking about a common language before 2000BC.

---

I believe the biblical story as well as a similar version from Sumeria;

https://books.google.com/books?id=g5MGVP6gAPkC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA278&focus=viewport&dq=The+Babel+of+Tongues:+A+Sumerian+Version#v=onepage&q=The%20Babel%20of%20Tongues%3A%20A%20Sumeria n%20Version&f=false

"the whole uninverse, the people in unison ... to Enlil in one tongue"

represent a confused version of the story of the adoption of modern language. About 3200 BC the Ancient Universal Language was becoming so complex some individuals couldn't understand it and a pidgin form of the language arose. This pidgin form was formatted like all modern languages and had no tie to reality or science. In order to communicate with these people it was necessary to invent writing because otherwise the meaning would drift as it was retold one to another. Eventually language became so complex that there weren't enough Ancient Language speakers to even operate the state so the official language changed to the pidgin modern language. The story of the "Tower of Babel" is probably a confused version of the event when modern language replaced the language that became solely the language of the few scientists. Indeed, it's even possible these scientists became known as the "Nephilim" and were still around as recently as (perhaps) 1000 BC.

I believe there is extensive evidence to prove these contentions. If you solve ancient writing (the Pyramid Texts) by using context to determine word meanings then this "book" becomes merely a book of the rituals read at the kings' ascension ceremonies. But the important thing is it is written in a different kind of language with a different kind of formatting. In this book it says there is a second Sphinx subsumed under the NE corner of the Great Pyramid and that around it is high walls upon which are inscribed the "Book of Thot" which is the ancient version of the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" however it is largely metaphysics rather than tables. It also contains history I think.

I tried for many years to get Egyptologists to do infrared scanning on this structure because I knew if I'm right that the scanning would show the entrances to this second Sphinx they called the "Mafdet Lynx".

Now they have done it and have found the entrance. I only recently was able to see the means to open this door but instead of stepping in or doing more research they are just trying to cover it all up. They are stonewalling.

I believe that the fact that the PT makes perfect sense when it is interpreted literally shows that the authors intended it literally. I believe since this literal interpretation is consistent with the physical evidence that the great pyramids were built by pulling stones straight up the sides of stepped pyramids that this "proves" the literal meaning was the intended one. I believe the ability of this theory to make good prediction is "proof" it is correct. I believe the fact that all of the data and all of modern science and modern scientific theory can be reinterpreted in this new light and still agree with experiment is "proof" it is correct.

--------------------
Men fear the pyramid, time fears man.

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

---

Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tukuler:

Anyway
Funny, I was thinking about language just today.
I thought
If OoA is true shouldn't all bona fide Eurasian languages be related?
Wouldn't they trace to some unknown African speech?
Stray survivors from the so-called failed OoA would've spoke something even different?

Did all humanity have speech at the same time?
Were languages all invented in situ?
How old are Click languages?
Are there really no relict Shorty lects?
Any college educated Shorties?
Loved by AEs, looked down on nowadays by fellow Africans.


???

---

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
Notice how Doug's position has changed again. smh. Treading water, desperately trying to reinvent his argument as he goes. Now all of a sudden the debate is about whether or not materialism can have some merit and produce some scientific results.

Somehow, he's trying to say that it was never about whether materialism is FACTUAL, but only about whether it can have merits.



Any approximation of nature will have some merits. Thanks for reminding us the sky is blue, Captain Obvious. But that is not what people were talking about in this thread.

As usual whenever you talk to Doug, he keeps taking the conversation to weird places when he feels cornered. Classic Doug sleight of hand flip flopping. And his sources are mostly walls of text that have no direct relevance here. That's another way Doug keeps introducing new confusion to debates. He'll just keep posting irrelevant walls of text which have only one or two sentences that happen to use the same words. Then he plucks quotes out of the article to make some contrived point that no one is talking about.

What purpose do Lioness and Doug serve in this thread? How have they contributed to it?

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
You just want to put everything and everyone into "thought camps"

---

quote:

---

In the world of ideas there is rarely anything new. So we are just going over (or at least I am pointing out) that a lot of these arguments are being held in many circles and are very old going back long before Darwin and Newton. These concepts go back to the fundamental root of human cognition and understanding.....

The difference now between modern "thought camps" is they try and cloak meta physical theories (meaning theories that cannot be ultimately proven and hence cannot answer all questions about everything through tangible proof) with "scientific" baggage as if to say that they have "more proof" of some abstract principle because of so and so "currently trending" scientific theory. This is absurd to me. Especially when these "exotic theories of the day" come and go every so many years and none of them provide the answers to everything that everybody claims they are going to answer.

In other words, it is all in your mind, there is no answer because it is all a hologram projected in your mind. Hence science is all invalid and we should just all walk through walls and fly through the sky like Neo in the matrix...... This is why folks harp on Darwinism so much as anti-science or anti-materialists because that is not "hip and cool" now. That is what most of these books and articles are pushing especially those jumping on the quantum bandwagon. It provides no more of an answer to the origin of life than anything else. Yet we don't need an answer because it is all in our minds. It is all just consciousness..... But the funny part is all these "anti-materialists" constantly use "material science" as the basis of their 'anti-material' theories.

---

What are you talking about? Seriously

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
You just want to put everything and everyone into "thought camps"

---

You have been putting people in thought camps for less. You went on record claiming disagreeing on applying the word 'black' to Egyptians makes you racist. You tried to make me out to be a racist in 2016 for the same reason. Part of your whole posting presence on ES revolves around claiming Egyptology as a racist thought camp and that Nubia is a racist word. At least I'm describing mainstream science as it sees itself when I use terms like materialism and Newtonian worldview. You are putting people in thought camps based on your own delusions. And you are putting people in racial camps, too, talking about 'black Amazonians'. I have been around these people in the Amazon. Your thought camps have no currency there or most other places outside of Afrocentric America.

How do you justify being such a flip flopping hypocrite? C'mon. Don't deflect now. I want to hear it. Explain to me how projecting the racism thought camp on a whole field is okay, but describing how mainstream science identifies itself, isn't.

quote:

---

In the world of ideas there is rarely anything new. So we are just going over (or at least I am pointing out) that a lot of these arguments are being held in many circles and are very old going back long before Darwin and Newton. These concepts go back to the fundamental root of human cognition and understanding.....

The difference now between modern "thought camps" is they try and cloak meta physical theories (meaning theories that cannot be ultimately proven and hence cannot answer all questions about everything through tangible proof) with "scientific" baggage as if to say that they have "more proof" of some abstract principle because of so and so "currently trending" scientific theory. This is absurd to me. Especially when these "exotic theories of the day" come and go every so many years and none of them provide the answers to everything that everybody claims they are going to answer.

In other words, it is all in your mind, there is no answer because it is all a hologram projected in your mind. Hence science is all invalid and we should just all walk through walls and fly through the sky like Neo in the matrix...... This is why folks harp on Darwinism so much as anti-science or anti-materialists because that is not "hip and cool" now. That is what most of these books and articles are pushing especially those jumping on the quantum bandwagon. It provides no more of an answer to the origin of life than anything else. Yet we don't need an answer because it is all in our minds. It is all just consciousness..... But the funny part is all these "anti-materialists" constantly use "material science" as the basis of their 'anti-material' theories.

---

What are you talking about? Seriously

---

quote:

---

I said mainstream science operates in the Newtonian worldview. That is not a statement about the nature of genetics. It's a statement about people operating in genetics and their misconceptions about how organisms work. Again, people from the science community have no problems with my description of them. So, you're basically just caping for the scientific community, like a dupe, when they don't even side with you. Is that what you're here to do? To be a self-appointed PR dupe going the extra mile trying to defend things they don't even object to? This is exactly what I mean when I say Doug is indoctrinated in European doctrines posing as science. He doesn't even know the extent of his brainwashing.

---

quote:

---

The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, as distinct from the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of one or another approach to establishing scientific knowledge. Despite the disagreements about approaches, scientific method has advanced in definite steps. Rationalist explanations of nature, including atomism, appeared both in ancient Greece in the thought of Leucippus and Democritus, and in ancient India, in the Nyaya, Vaisesika and Buddhist schools, while Charvaka materialism rejected inference as a source of knowledge in favour of an empiricism that was always subject to doubt. Aristotle pioneered scientific method in ancient Greece alongside his empirical biology and his work on logic, rejecting a purely deductive framework in favour of generalisations made from observations of nature.

Some of the most important debates in the history of scientific method center on: rationalism, especially as advocated by René Descartes; inductivism, which rose to particular prominence with Isaac Newton and his followers; and hypothetico-deductivism, which came to the fore in the early 19th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a debate over realism vs. antirealism was central to discussions of scientific method as powerful scientific theories extended beyond the realm of the observable, while in the mid-20th century some prominent philosophers argued against any universal rules of science at all.[1]

---

quote:

---

The first edition of Principia features proposals about the movements of celestial bodies which Newton initially calls "hypotheses"—however, by the second edition, the word "hypothesis" was replaced by the word "rule", and Newton had added to the footnotes the following statement:

... I frame no hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.[5]

Newton's work and the philosophy that enshrines it are based on mathematical empiricism, which is the idea that mathematical and physical laws may be revealed in the real world via experimentation and observation.[2] It is important to note, however, that Newton's empiricism is balanced against an adherence to an exact mathematical system, and that in many cases the "observed phenomena" upon which Newton built his theories were actually based on mathematical models, which were representative but not identical to the natural phenomena they described.[2]

---

quote:

---

The structure of scientific theories is a rich topic. Theorizing and modeling are core activities across the sciences, whether old (e.g., relativity theory, evolutionary theory) or new (e.g., climate modeling, cognitive science, and systems biology). Furthermore, theory remains essential to developing multipurpose tools such as statistical models and procedures (e.g., Bayesian models for data analysis, agent-based models for simulation, network theory for systems analysis). Given the strength and relevance of theory and theorizing to the natural sciences, and even to the social sciences (e.g., microeconomics, physical, if not cultural, anthropology), philosophical attention to the structure of scientific theories could and should increase. This piece has focused on a comparison of three major perspectives: Syntactic View, Semantic View, and Pragmatic View. In order to handle these complex debates effectively, we have sidestepped certain key philosophical questions, including questions about scientific realism; scientific explanation and prediction; theoretical and ontological reductionism; knowledge-production and epistemic inference; the distinction between science and technology; and the relationship between science and society. Each of these topics bears further philosophical investigation in light of the three perspectives here explored.

---

quote:

---

Teleological terms such as "function" and "design" appear frequently in the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims include:

A (biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to predators that they have been detected.
Eagles' wings are (naturally) designed for soaring.

Teleological notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian view that the biological realm provides evidence of conscious design by a supernatural creator. Even after creationist viewpoints were rejected by most biologists there remained various grounds for concern about the role of teleology in biology, including whether such terms are:

vitalistic (positing some special "life-force");
requiring backwards causation (because future outcomes explain present traits);
incompatible with mechanistic explanation (because of 1 and 2);
mentalistic (attributing the action of mind where there is none);
empirically untestable (for all the above reasons).

---

quote:

---

Skip to content

Home
About

Thomas Nagel’s natural teleology
Posted on August 19, 2014 by SamL

I recently read Thomas Nagel’s mercifully short Mind and Cosmos — mostly just to see what all the fuss was about — and one of the weirder lines of enquiry he pursues concerns what he calls the ‘historical problem of consciousness’. This is the problem of how consciousness came to be, which Nagel wants to distinguish from the ‘constitutive problem of consciousness’, i.e. the problem of what consciousness is. He writes [1]:

The historical account of how conscious organisms arose in the universe can take one of three forms: it will either be causal (appealing only to law-governed efficient causation), or teleological, or intentional.

A causal explanation is the sort of thing a Darwinian account of the evolution of consciousness might offer, while an intentional explanation would appeal to the plans of some agent who made things happen the way they have (guess who). Teleological explanation is murkier, and it is here that Nagel positions himself, attempting to stake out some sort of middle ground between theism and materialism.

Teleological explanations of a sort do appear in science — particularly in biology — but usually with the proviso that they are to be understood as shorthands (or sometimes heuristics) for lower-level causal explanations. So we might explain the web-building behaviour of spiders in terms of its purpose (i.e. spiders build webs in order to catch flies), but on the understanding that the ‘purpose’ of an organism’s behaviour just refers to those of its causal effects which increase the organism’s inclusive fitness.

Even intentions crop up: when a gene has effects which result in its spread through a population (altruistic behaviour in cases of kin selection is a favourite example) it can be helpful to think of the gene as an agent with goals. But this kind of agenthood is underpinned by the fact that genes have causal effects which can influence their own spread, and so can be regarded as beneficiaries of these effects. Genes are agents, then, only insofar as their interactions can be modelled using game theory, and this is a criterion which can be cashed out in purely causal terms.

It can also be tempting to ascribe teleological features to systems which have intrinsic tendencies. So we might say that soap bubbles ‘want’ to become spheres, or (more generally) that dynamic systems ‘want’ to minimise their free energy. But here, as in the above cases, this can be understood in terms of patterns of efficient causality at lower levels which give rise to emergent features at higher ones. (Rather than the spread of traits through populations, in this case the causal explanation might mention singularities in a system’s phase space, for example.)

None of this is quite what Nagel is after. He wants some form of teleology which neither can be paraphrased away using efficient causes, nor which requires a real agent. This jams him into a rather narrow crease, and forces him to say things like “Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself” while unable to say anything substantial about what it means for the universe to be the sort of unity which can ‘wake up’. The faint whiff of woo that rises from such statements no doubt accounts for much of the scorn that has been poured on this book since it was published in 2012.

---

quote:

---

t was an idea long consigned to the dustbin of scientific history. ‘Like a virgin consecrated to God,’ Francis Bacon declared nearly 400 years ago, it ‘produces nothing’. It was anti-rational nonsense, the last resort of unfashionable idealists and religious agitators. And then, late last year, one of the world’s most renowned philosophers published a book arguing that we should take it seriously after all. Biologists and philosophers lined up to give the malefactor a kicking. His ideas were ‘outdated’, complained some. Another wrote: ‘I regret the appearance of this book.’ Steven Pinker sneered at ‘the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker’. The Guardian called it ‘the most despised science book of 2012’. So what made everyone so angry?

The thinker was Thomas Nagel, the book was Mind and Cosmos, and the idea was teleology. In ancient science (or, as it used to be called, natural philosophy), teleology held that things — in particular, living things — had a natural end, or telos, at which they aimed. The acorn, Aristotle said, sprouted and grew into a seedling because its purpose was to become a mighty oak. Sometimes, teleology seemed to imply an intention to pursue such an end, if not in the organism then in the mind of a creator. It could also be taken to imply an uncomfortable idea of reverse causation, with the telos — or ‘final cause’ — acting backwards in time to affect earlier events. For such reasons, teleology was ceremonially disowned at the birth of modern experimental science.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
So you claim that people operating in genetics are operating in a "newtonian" worldview, even though nothing about genetics is based on particle physics.... This is what I mean. Genetics is not about mass and atomic density or the nature of matter in its most fundamental sense. You are mixing apples and oranges.

The only way genetics or any other branch of modern science is "newtonian" is based on the practice of the "scientific method" when it comes to observing the world and being able to create theories based on actual tangible "material" examples. (Which comes from alchemy and the observation of nature and the minds eye, meaning thought and contemplation). But genetics as a field of science is not the same as "mechanics". Of course science deals with tangible "material" in the real world. Would you fly a plane built by someone who hasn't done any 'material' experimentation to see if it would fly? Of course not. This is what I mean by apples and oranges. Science needs tangible material proof and evidence in order to advance the tools and calculations related to working in the "material world".

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
So you claim that people operating in genetics are operating in a "newtonian" worldview, even though nothing about genetics is based on particle physics.... This is what I mean. Genetics is not about mass and atomic density or the nature of matter in its most fundamental sense. You are mixing apples and oranges.

The only way genetics or any other branch of modern science is "newtonian" is based on the practice of the "scientific method" when it comes to observing the world and being able to create theories based on actual tangible "material" examples. (Which comes from alchemy and the observation of nature and the minds eye, meaning thought and contemplation). But genetics as a field of science is not the same as "mechanics". Of course science deals with tangible "material" in the real world. Would you fly a plane built by someone who hasn't done any 'material' experimentation to see if it would fly? Of course not. This is what I mean by apples and oranges. Science needs tangible material proof and evidence in order to advance the tools and calculations related to working in the "material world".

---

If by now you still don't understand the Newtonian worldview is not about Newton, Newton's religion, Newton's personal views, Newton's laws, the field of physics, particles, matter, etc. you have severe problems with words and language. All these things I've just mentioned, you've tried to equate with the Newtonian worldview, so we know you're just groping in the dark over several thread pages, trying to push back against a word you don't even understand. You obviously also don't understand what materialism means.

I'm starting to realize some people on this site have deep-seated problems with words and concepts. And it's always the same people. The same problems with people not comprehending basic terms and explanations centering around basic terms keeps playing out over years and many threads. I've been here before many times, it's just some other word today. Tomorrow it will be another basic word or concept. It's simply not possible to communicate with people like you without wasting your time. You are definitely in the same comprehension boat as lioness.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Are “Bad Genes” to Blame for Your Health Problems?

The Human Genome Project (HGP), an international research project aimed at mapping all of the genes that make up the human genetic make-up, held much promise. Many scientists and laypeople alike were convinced that we would finally get the answers we need to effectively treat cancer, heart disease, and many other health conditions. The disappointment was huge when it was realised that this was not going to happen. Genetic analyses showed that the theory that many common diseases are caused by mutations in just one or a couple of genes was highly flawed. That doesn’t mean that genetics aren’t important in health and disease; however, it does mean that we should abandon old, invalidated theories related to the genetics of disease in favor of ones that are more scientifically sound

---

quote:

---

Leaving aside the difficulty in defining terms such as “complexity” and “gene“, there has been for many decades an underlying assumption that there ought to be some relationship between morphological complexity and the number of protein-coding genes within a genome. This is a holdover from the pre-molecular era of genetics, when it was at first thought that total genome size should be related to gene number, and thus to complexity. Indeed, the constancy of DNA content within chromosome sets (“C-values”) was taken as evidence that DNA is the substance of heredity, and yet it was recognized as early as 1951 that there is no clear relationship between the amount of DNA per genome and organismal complexity (e.g., Mirsky and Ris 1951; Gregory 2005). By 1971, this had become known as the “C-value paradox” because it seemed so self-contradictory (Thomas 1971). (The solution to the C-value paradox was that most eukaryotic DNA is non-coding, although this raises plenty of questions of its own).

---

quote:

---

Genetic determinism
Genetic determinism is the attempt to reduce the whole of biology to the physical sciences, with the behavior of organisms being shaped largely by their genetic constitution.

---

quote:

---

Why Genetic Determinism Is Bad for Humans
...
Michael Skinner, a professor at the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University says, though, that the role of genetics is being overstated here as it has been for decades. Skinner is an expert in epigenetics, which is the study of the environment's impact on genetics.

"There is no genetic-process-only phenomena, as there is no epigenetic-only phenomena. The age of genetic determinism needs to end," he says. Genetics only paints half the picture of human biology.
...

---

quote:

---

Rethinking Genetic Determinism
Paul H. Silverman

Courtesy of Paul H. Silverman

For more than 50 years scientists have operated under a set of seemingly incontrovertible assumptions about genes, gene expression, and the consequences thereof. Their mantra: One gene yields one protein; genes beget messenger RNA, which in turn begets protein; and most critically, the gene is deterministic in gene expression and can therefore predict disease propensities.Yet during the last five years, data have revealed inadequacies in this theory.

---

quote:

---

By that time, genes were no longer simply the key to understanding health: they had become the skeleton key for unlocking almost all the mysteries of human existence. For virtually every aspect of life – criminality, fidelity, political persuasion, religious belief – someone would claim to find a gene for it. In 2005 in Hall County, Georgia, Stephen Mobley tried to avoid execution by claiming that his murder of a Domino’s pizza store manager was the result of a mutation in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene. The judge turned down the appeal, saying that the law was not ready to accept such evidence. The basic idea, however, that the low-MAOA gene is a major contributing cause of violence has become widely accepted, and it is now commonly called the “warrior gene”.

---

quote:

---

It’s 40 years since Richard Dawkins suggested, in the opening words of The Selfish Gene, that, were an alien to visit Earth, the question it would pose to judge our intellectual maturity was: “Have they discovered evolution yet?” We had, of course, by the grace of Charles Darwin and a century of evolutionary biologists who had been trying to figure out how natural selection actually worked. In 1976, The Selfish Gene became the first real blockbuster popular science book, a poetic mark in the sand to the public and scientists alike: this idea had to enter our thinking, our research and our culture.

The idea was this: genes strive for immortality, and individuals, families, and species are merely vehicles in that quest. The behaviour of all living things is in service of their genes hence, metaphorically, they are selfish. Before this, it had been proposed that natural selection was honing the behaviour of living things to promote the continuance through time of the individual creature, or family, or group or species. But in fact, Dawkins said, it was the gene itself that was trying to survive, and it just so happened that the best way for it to survive was in concert with other genes in the impermanent husk of an individual.

This gene-centric view of evolution also began to explain one of the oddities of life on Earth – the behaviour of social insects. What is the point of a drone bee, doomed to remain childless and in the service of a totalitarian queen? Suddenly it made sense that, with the gene itself steering evolution, the fact that the drone shared its DNA with the queen meant that its servitude guarantees not the individual’s survival, but the endurance of the genes they share. Or as the Anglo-Indian biologist JBS Haldane put it: “Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.”

---

quote:

---

In August 2012, nine months after being artificially
inseminated using a sperm donation
from the Midwest Sperm Bank of Downers
Grove, Illinois, a white Ohio woman named
Jennifer Cramblett gave birth to a racially
“mixed” and healthy baby girl named Payton.
Despite the triumph, the woman soon filed a
“wrongful birth” suit in Cook County Circuit
Court, alleging that the sperm bank gave her
sperm vials from an African American donor
instead of a white donor, which in turn caused
“personal injuries ... pain, suffering, emotional
distress and other economic and non-economic
losses” (Circuit Court 2014, 8). The lawsuit
states “that they now live each day with fears,
anxieties and uncertainty about her future and
Payton’s future” (Circuit Court 2014, 6).
The supposed racial mismatch between parent
and child in Cramblett v. Midwest Sperm
Bank reveals the presence of two powerful
belief systems that haunt both the popular
imagination and stalk the scientific landscape:
the notions of “biological determinism” (that
race is genetically inherited) and “racial essentialism”
(that group-based biology maps to
basic social behaviors). Together, biological
determinism and racial essentialism form the
“ideological double helix” that intertwines to
shape beliefs about race and inequality and
influence the theoretical approaches, analytic
strategies, and interpretations taken by scholars
conducting biomedical and social scientific research.

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
Stop scrambling Doug, trying to walk back what you said. We know what you said.

Let's look at the same Newtonian worldview you claim doesn't exist in genetics, because genetics supposedly "doesn't deal with physics". Not only is that claim wrong, but you and lioness are the only ones trolling and equating the Newtonian worldview with physics and Newton's religious beliefs.

Let's now look at evidence of the Newtonian worldview (e.g. reductionism and materialism) in genetics:

quote:

---

Are “Bad Genes” to Blame for Your Health Problems?

The Human Genome Project (HGP), an international research project aimed at mapping all of the genes that make up the human genetic make-up, held much promise. Many scientists and laypeople alike were convinced that we would finally get the answers we need to effectively treat cancer, heart disease, and many other health conditions. The disappointment was huge when it was realised that this was not going to happen. Genetic analyses showed that the theory that many common diseases are caused by mutations in just one or a couple of genes was highly flawed. That doesn’t mean that genetics aren’t important in health and disease; however, it does mean that we should abandon old, invalidated theories related to the genetics of disease in favor of ones that are more scientifically sound

---

http://darwinian-medicine.com/are-bad-genes-to-blame-for-your-health-problems/

quote:

---

Leaving aside the difficulty in defining terms such as “complexity” and “gene“, there has been for many decades an underlying assumption that there ought to be some relationship between morphological complexity and the number of protein-coding genes within a genome. This is a holdover from the pre-molecular era of genetics, when it was at first thought that total genome size should be related to gene number, and thus to complexity. Indeed, the constancy of DNA content within chromosome sets (“C-values”) was taken as evidence that DNA is the substance of heredity, and yet it was recognized as early as 1951 that there is no clear relationship between the amount of DNA per genome and organismal complexity (e.g., Mirsky and Ris 1951; Gregory 2005). By 1971, this had become known as the “C-value paradox” because it seemed so self-contradictory (Thomas 1971). (The solution to the C-value paradox was that most eukaryotic DNA is non-coding, although this raises plenty of questions of its own).

---

http://www.genomicron.evolverzone.com/2007/05/gene-number-and-complexity/

quote:

---

Genetic determinism
Genetic determinism is the attempt to reduce the whole of biology to the physical sciences, with the behavior of organisms being shaped largely by their genetic constitution.

---

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/genetic-determinism

quote:

---

Why Genetic Determinism Is Bad for Humans
...
Michael Skinner, a professor at the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University says, though, that the role of genetics is being overstated here as it has been for decades. Skinner is an expert in epigenetics, which is the study of the environment's impact on genetics.

"There is no genetic-process-only phenomena, as there is no epigenetic-only phenomena. The age of genetic determinism needs to end," he says. Genetics only paints half the picture of human biology.
...

---

https://gizmodo.com/5869785/why-genetic-determinism-is-bad-for-humans

quote:

---

Rethinking Genetic Determinism
Paul H. Silverman

Courtesy of Paul H. Silverman

For more than 50 years scientists have operated under a set of seemingly incontrovertible assumptions about genes, gene expression, and the consequences thereof. Their mantra: One gene yields one protein; genes beget messenger RNA, which in turn begets protein; and most critically, the gene is deterministic in gene expression and can therefore predict disease propensities.Yet during the last five years, data have revealed inadequacies in this theory.

---

https://www.the-scientist.com/vision/rethinking-genetic-determinism-50020

quote:

---

By that time, genes were no longer simply the key to understanding health: they had become the skeleton key for unlocking almost all the mysteries of human existence. For virtually every aspect of life – criminality, fidelity, political persuasion, religious belief – someone would claim to find a gene for it. In 2005 in Hall County, Georgia, Stephen Mobley tried to avoid execution by claiming that his murder of a Domino’s pizza store manager was the result of a mutation in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene. The judge turned down the appeal, saying that the law was not ready to accept such evidence. The basic idea, however, that the low-MAOA gene is a major contributing cause of violence has become widely accepted, and it is now commonly called the “warrior gene”.

---

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/19/do-your-genes-determine-your-entire-life

quote:

---

It’s 40 years since Richard Dawkins suggested, in the opening words of The Selfish Gene, that, were an alien to visit Earth, the question it would pose to judge our intellectual maturity was: “Have they discovered evolution yet?” We had, of course, by the grace of Charles Darwin and a century of evolutionary biologists who had been trying to figure out how natural selection actually worked. In 1976, The Selfish Gene became the first real blockbuster popular science book, a poetic mark in the sand to the public and scientists alike: this idea had to enter our thinking, our research and our culture.

The idea was this: genes strive for immortality, and individuals, families, and species are merely vehicles in that quest. The behaviour of all living things is in service of their genes hence, metaphorically, they are selfish. Before this, it had been proposed that natural selection was honing the behaviour of living things to promote the continuance through time of the individual creature, or family, or group or species. But in fact, Dawkins said, it was the gene itself that was trying to survive, and it just so happened that the best way for it to survive was in concert with other genes in the impermanent husk of an individual.

This gene-centric view of evolution also began to explain one of the oddities of life on Earth – the behaviour of social insects. What is the point of a drone bee, doomed to remain childless and in the service of a totalitarian queen? Suddenly it made sense that, with the gene itself steering evolution, the fact that the drone shared its DNA with the queen meant that its servitude guarantees not the individual’s survival, but the endurance of the genes they share. Or as the Anglo-Indian biologist JBS Haldane put it: “Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.”

---

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/29/selfish-gene-40-years-richard-dawkins-do-ideas-stand-up-adam-rutherford

---

quote:

---

3. The Epistemology of Determinism

How could we ever decide whether our world is deterministic or not? Given that some philosophers and some physicists have held firm views—with many prominent examples on each side—one would think that it should be at least a clearly decidable question. Unfortunately, even this much is not clear, and the epistemology of determinism turns out to be a thorny and multi-faceted issue.
3.1 Laws again

As we saw above, for determinism to be true there have to be some laws of nature. Most philosophers and scientists since the 17th century have indeed thought that there are. But in the face of more recent skepticism, how can it be proven that there are? And if this hurdle can be overcome, don't we have to know, with certainty, precisely what the laws of our world are, in order to tackle the question of determinism's truth or falsity?

The first hurdle can perhaps be overcome by a combination of metaphysical argument and appeal to knowledge we already have of the physical world. Philosophers are currently pursuing this issue actively, in large part due to the efforts of the anti-laws minority. The debate has been most recently framed by Cartwright in The Dappled World (Cartwright 1999) in terms psychologically advantageous to her anti-laws cause. Those who believe in the existence of traditional, universal laws of nature are fundamentalists; those who disbelieve are pluralists. This terminology seems to be becoming standard (see Belot 2001), so the first task in the epistemology of determinism is for fundamentalists to establish the reality of laws of nature (see Hoefer 2002b).

Even if the first hurdle can be overcome, the second, namely establishing precisely what the actual laws are, may seem daunting indeed. In a sense, what we are asking for is precisely what 19th and 20th century physicists sometimes set as their goal: the Final Theory of Everything. But perhaps, as Newton said of establishing the solar system's absolute motion, “the thing is not altogether desperate.” Many physicists in the past 60 years or so have been convinced of determinism's falsity, because they were convinced that (a) whatever the Final Theory is, it will be some recognizable variant of the family of quantum mechanical theories; and (b) all quantum mechanical theories are non-deterministic. Both (a) and (b) are highly debatable, but the point is that one can see how arguments in favor of these positions might be mounted. The same was true in the 19th century, when theorists might have argued that (a) whatever the Final Theory is, it will involve only continuous fluids and solids governed by partial differential equations; and (b) all such theories are deterministic. (Here, (b) is almost certainly false; see Earman (1986),ch. XI). Even if we now are not, we may in future be in a position to mount a credible argument for or against determinism on the grounds of features we think we know the Final Theory must have.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Darwin Recognized That the Fossil Record in His
Day Did Not Match What His Theory Predicted.

The fossil record is the documented collection
of animal and plant fossils known worldwide.
Darwin recognized that this particular body of
evidence was of pivotal importance for eventually
proving his theory. For that reason, a closer look
at the fossil record is necessary to better assess the
theory of evolution.
When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species,
he surprisingly included a two-chapter apology
(Difficulties of the Theory and On the Imperfection of
the Geological Record) in which he recognized that
the fossils collected by scientists prior to 1859 did
not correspond with his theory of evolution. While
fossils of invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds, mam -
mals, and humans had been discovered, the fossil
record still lacked sufficient evidence of inverte -
brates changing into fish; of fish changing into
amphibians; and of reptiles changing into birds and
mammals. In other words, there were “gaps” in the
fossil record. The transitional forms between the
animal groups (also referred to as intermediates or
ancestors) were, in large part, missing.
Darwin acknowledged this discrepancy in The
Origin of Species. He wrote: “Why then is not every
geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not
reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged against the theory.” 1
Interestingly, Darwin formulated his theory despite
what the fossils disclosed. Ideally, a scientist devel-
ops a theory from patterns of “known” data, but
Darwin did the opposite. He predicted the data would
be found later.

quote:

---

“Darwin devotes two chapters of The Origin [of Species] to the
fossil record. And you might think that’s because Darwin, like most
of his intellectual descendants, would have seen the fossil record as
the confirmation of his theory. That you could really see, directly
document, the evolution of life from the Cambrian to the present.
But, in fact, when you read The Origin [of Species], it turns out
that Darwin’s two chapters are a carefully worded apology in
which he argues that natural selection is correct despite the fact
that the fossils don’t particularly support it.” 2
–— Dr. Knoll

---

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

quote:

---

Darwin Recognized That the Fossil Record in His
Day Did Not Match What His Theory Predicted.

The fossil record is the documented collection
of animal and plant fossils known worldwide.
Darwin recognized that this particular body of
evidence was of pivotal importance for eventually
proving his theory. For that reason, a closer look
at the fossil record is necessary to better assess the
theory of evolution.
When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species,
he surprisingly included a two-chapter apology
(Difficulties of the Theory and On the Imperfection of
the Geological Record) in which he recognized that
the fossils collected by scientists prior to 1859 did
not correspond with his theory of evolution. While
fossils of invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds, mam -
mals, and humans had been discovered, the fossil
record still lacked sufficient evidence of inverte -
brates changing into fish; of fish changing into
amphibians; and of reptiles changing into birds and
mammals. In other words, there were “gaps” in the
fossil record. The transitional forms between the
animal groups (also referred to as intermediates or
ancestors) were, in large part, missing.
Darwin acknowledged this discrepancy in The
Origin of Species. He wrote: “Why then is not every
geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not
reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged against the theory.” 1
Interestingly, Darwin formulated his theory despite
what the fossils disclosed. Ideally, a scientist devel-
ops a theory from patterns of “known” data, but
Darwin did the opposite. He predicted the data would
be found later.

quote:

---

“Darwin devotes two chapters of The Origin [of Species] to the
fossil record. And you might think that’s because Darwin, like most
of his intellectual descendants, would have seen the fossil record as
the confirmation of his theory. That you could really see, directly
document, the evolution of life from the Cambrian to the present.
But, in fact, when you read The Origin [of Species], it turns out
that Darwin’s two chapters are a carefully worded apology in
which he argues that natural selection is correct despite the fact
that the fossils don’t particularly support it.” 2
–— Dr. Knoll

---

---

Read more:

https://imgur.com/vLryzPJ (p87)
https://imgur.com/qO6dp8K (p88)
https://imgur.com/55Is7hq (p89)
https://imgur.com/jHio2Dp (p90)
https://imgur.com/6InPtWj (p91)
https://imgur.com/ej4oYf4 (p92)
https://imgur.com/oG8xJXn (p93)
https://imgur.com/l6HHpl6 (p94)
https://imgur.com/JYOeGnH (p95)
https://imgur.com/WpEAix1 (p96)
https://imgur.com/ikOi0Xh (p97)
https://imgur.com/9frXC11 (p98)
https://imgur.com/7bvukHe (p99)
https://imgur.com/UZ91VDU (p100)
https://imgur.com/LPWKFCg (p101)
https://imgur.com/8L6fM4h (p102)
https://imgur.com/vMoAcHb (p103)
https://imgur.com/cgBvhFK (p104)
https://imgur.com/jR9QgPP (p105)
https://imgur.com/mSuD9De (p106)
https://imgur.com/6ICmdVm (p107)
https://imgur.com/BPT0Xi8 (p108)
https://imgur.com/MVCvqal (p109)
https://imgur.com/11hUuqm (p110)
https://imgur.com/1Qsg45l (p111)
https://imgur.com/WLj0h7l (p112)

Source

---

quote:

---

There's considerable debate among evolutionary biologists about what caused this relatively rapid appearance of diverse and disparate large fossils. Intelligent Design Creationist, Stephen Meyer decided that such a debate casts serious doubt on evolution as an explanation for the history of life so he wrote a book called Darwin's Doubt.

Meyer thinks he has a much more reasonable explanation. He believes that a supernatural being visited the Earth about 540 million years ago and noticed that it was teeming with life—lots of plants, algae, fungi, protozoa, and bacteria. The god(s) thought there should be some bigger creatures called "animals" so he/she/it/they built a few and let them loose to reproduce and evolve.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by sudaniya:
I really must commend Swenet for having a mind of his own and for revealing these important things to the board.

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
Excellent reference. Darwin was proposing a theory without all the evidence from the fossil record, but a theory that fit well with the evidence from more recent species such as humans or turtles and so forth. And many biologists follow this general theory of evolution based on more recent tangible evidence of speciation and evolution all the while acknowledging the gaps and difficulties with the ancient record. (I personally find it highly unlikely that anybody will have all the data to understand what happened 500 million years ago in biological evolution. That is too much a gap in time, not to mention the 500 million years preceding it.) That said, I don't see it as "bad" or "wrong" for science to try to reconstruct what took place based on "material" evidence that is available to formulate hypotheses.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
all the while acknowledging the gaps and difficulties with the ancient record

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
Let me repeat again that my position is not against evolution. My position is against Darwinian evolution and all other mainstream evolutionist thought.

---

quote:

---

Encyclopedia Britannica

Evolution


Evolution, theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations. The theory of evolution is one of the fundamental keystones of modern biological theory.

---

Posts: 43015 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
Excellent reference. Darwin was proposing a theory without all the evidence from the fossil record, but a theory that fit well with the evidence from more recent species such as humans or turtles and so forth. And many biologists follow this general theory of evolution based on more recent tangible evidence of speciation and evolution all the while acknowledging the gaps and difficulties with the ancient record. (I personally find it highly unlikely that anybody will have all the data to understand what happened 500 million years ago in biological evolution. That is too much a gap in time, not to mention the 500 million years preceding it.) That said, I don't see it as "bad" or "wrong" for science to try to reconstruct what took place based on "material" evidence that is available to formulate hypotheses.

---

Thanks. But when you say there is tangible evidence for evolution and speciation, it sounds like we're not on the same wave-length. Let me repeat again that my position is not against evolution. My position is against Darwinian evolution and all other mainstream evolutionist thought. Again, I disagree with these ideas because I don't buy into the narrow set of phenomena (i.e. chemicals, matter) they acknowledge as existing in reality. If they say consciousness is an illusory side-effect of the brain, they've already talked themselves out of solutions and can never make progress in evolution.

---

quote:

---

1. Conception of Knowledge
1.1 Analysis of Knowledge

Famously, Descartes defines knowledge in terms of doubt. While distinguishing rigorous knowledge (scientia) and lesser grades of conviction (persuasio), Descartes writes:

I distinguish the two as follows: there is conviction when there remains some reason which might lead us to doubt, but knowledge is conviction based on a reason so strong that it can never be shaken by any stronger reason. (1640 letter to Regius, AT 3:65)

Elsewhere, while answering a challenge as to whether he succeeds in founding such knowledge, Descartes writes:

But since I see that you are still stuck fast in the doubts which I put forward in the First Meditation, and which I thought I had very carefully removed in the succeeding Meditations, I shall now expound for a second time the basis on which it seems to me that all human certainty can be founded.

First of all, as soon as we think that we correctly perceive something, we are spontaneously convinced that it is true. Now if this conviction is so firm that it is impossible for us ever to have any reason for doubting what we are convinced of, then there are no further questions for us to ask: we have everything that we could reasonably want. … For the supposition which we are making here is of a conviction so firm that it is quite incapable of being destroyed; and such a conviction is clearly the same as the most perfect certainty. (Replies 2, AT 7:144–45)


....

4. Cogito Ergo Sum
4.1 The First Item of Knowledge

Famously, Descartes puts forward a very simple candidate as the “first item of knowledge.” The candidate is suggested by methodic doubt — by the very effort at thinking all my thoughts might be mistaken. Early in the Second Meditation, Descartes has his meditator observe:

I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (Med. 2, AT 7:25)
....
4.2 But is it Knowledge?

There are interpretive disputes about whether the cogito is supposed to count as indefeasible Knowledge. (That is, about whether it thus counts upon its initial introduction, prior to the arguments for God.) Many commentators hold that it is supposed to count, but the case for this interpretation is by no means clear.

There is no disputing that Descartes characterizes the cogito as the “first item of knowledge [cognitione]” (Med. 3, AT 7:35); as the first “piece of knowledge [cognitio]” (Prin. 1:194, AT 8a:7). Noteworthy, however, is the Latin terminology (‘cognitio’ and its cognates) that Descartes uses in these characterizations. As discussed in Section 1.3, Descartes is a contextualist in the sense that he uses ‘knowledge’ language in two different contexts of clear and distinct judgments: the less rigorous context includes defeasible judgments, as in the case of the atheist geometer (who can't block hyperbolic doubt); the more rigorous context requires indefeasible judgments, as with the brand of Knowledge sought after in the Meditations.

Worthy of attention is that Descartes characterizes the cogito using the same cognitive language that he uses to characterize the atheist's defeasible cognition. Recall that Descartes writes of the atheist's clear and distinct grasp of geometry: “I maintain that this awareness [cognitionem] of his is not true knowledge [scientiam]” (Replies 2, AT 7:141). This alone does not prove that the cogito is supposed to be defeasible. It does, however, prove that calling it the “first item of knowledge [cognitione]” doesn't entail that Descartes intends it as indefeasible Knowledge.

Bearing further on whether the cogito counts as indefeasible Knowledge — prior to having refuted the Evil Genius Doubt — is the No Atheistic Knowledge Thesis (cf. Section 1.3 above). Descartes makes repeated and unequivocal statements implying this thesis. Consider the following texts, each arising in a context of clarifying the requirements of indefeasible Knowledge (all italics are mine):

For if I do not know this [i.e., “whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver”], it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else. (Med. 3, AT 7:36)

I see that the certainty of all other things depends on this [knowledge of God], so that without it nothing can ever be perfectly known [perfecte sciri]. (Med. 5, AT 7:69)

[I]f I did not possess knowledge of God … I should thus never have true and certain knowledge [scientiam] about anything, but only shifting and changeable opinions. (Med. 5, AT 7:69)

And upon claiming finally to have achieved indefeasible Knowledge:

Thus I see plainly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge [scientiae] depends uniquely on my awareness of the true God, to such an extent that I was incapable of perfect knowledge [perfecte scire] about anything else until I became aware of him. (Med. 5, AT 7:71)

These texts make a powerful case that nothing else can be indefeasibly Known prior to establishing that we're creatures of an all-perfect God, rather than an evil genius. These texts make no exceptions. Descartes looks to hold that hyperbolic doubt is utterly unbounded — that it undermines all manner of propositions, including therefore the proposition that “I exist.”

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

If one thinks organisms can only be constructed bottom-up (atoms to molecules, to cells, to tissues, to organs), one can't understand evolution. How do I know that? I've already explained how. Again, I have to repeat: 1) consciousness and subjectivity are not bottom-up phenomena and 2) consciousness can be shown not only to affect the body, but also outside reality. The latter has already been demonstrated in countless controlled experiments (e.g. double slit experiment). These facts turn mainstream science on its head and expose the limitations of bottom-up evolution theories. Mainstream scientists simply ignore it or try to speculate it away due to ideological commitment to the Newtonian worldview.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
all the while acknowledging the gaps and difficulties with the ancient record

---

Generally, they're not acknowledging anything. They're ignoring problems in the fossil record. Why do you keep trying to defend these people on issues they clearly don't want to be defended on? Dawkins and people like him are saying the fossil record confirms Darwinism. They're not admitting to any problems. They're downplaying problems. And if you're going to defend them, at least post sources. What textbooks give extensive explanations of difficulties with the fossil record, without trying to downplay or mislead? Please name these textbooks.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
[qb]

quote:

---

Darwin Recognized That the Fossil Record in His
Day Did Not Match What His Theory Predicted.

The fossil record is the documented collection
of animal and plant fossils known worldwide.
Darwin recognized that this particular body of
evidence was of pivotal importance for eventually
proving his theory. For that reason, a closer look
at the fossil record is necessary to better assess the
theory of evolution.
When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species,
he surprisingly included a two-chapter apology
(Difficulties of the Theory and On the Imperfection of
the Geological Record) in which he recognized that
the fossils collected by scientists prior to 1859 did
not correspond with his theory of evolution. While
fossils of invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds, mam -
mals, and humans had been discovered, the fossil
record still lacked sufficient evidence of inverte -
brates changing into fish; of fish changing into
amphibians; and of reptiles changing into birds and
mammals. In other words, there were “gaps” in the
fossil record. The transitional forms between the
animal groups (also referred to as intermediates or
ancestors) were, in large part, missing.
Darwin acknowledged this discrepancy in The
Origin of Species. He wrote: “Why then is not every
geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not
reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged against the theory.” 1
Interestingly, Darwin formulated his theory despite
what the fossils disclosed. Ideally, a scientist devel-
ops a theory from patterns of “known” data, but
Darwin did the opposite. He predicted the data would
be found later.

quote:

---

“Darwin devotes two chapters of The Origin [of Species] to the
fossil record. And you might think that’s because Darwin, like most
of his intellectual descendants, would have seen the fossil record as
the confirmation of his theory. That you could really see, directly
document, the evolution of life from the Cambrian to the present.
But, in fact, when you read The Origin [of Species], it turns out
that Darwin’s two chapters are a carefully worded apology in
which he argues that natural selection is correct despite the fact
that the fossils don’t particularly support it.” 2
–— Dr. Knoll

---

---

Read more:

https://imgur.com/vLryzPJ (p87)
https://imgur.com/qO6dp8K (p88)
https://imgur.com/55Is7hq (p89)
https://imgur.com/jHio2Dp (p90)
https://imgur.com/6InPtWj (p91)
https://imgur.com/ej4oYf4 (p92)
https://imgur.com/oG8xJXn (p93)
https://imgur.com/l6HHpl6 (p94)
https://imgur.com/JYOeGnH (p95)
https://imgur.com/WpEAix1 (p96)
https://imgur.com/ikOi0Xh (p97)
https://imgur.com/9frXC11 (p98)
https://imgur.com/7bvukHe (p99)
https://imgur.com/UZ91VDU (p100)
https://imgur.com/LPWKFCg (p101)
https://imgur.com/8L6fM4h (p102)
https://imgur.com/vMoAcHb (p103)
https://imgur.com/cgBvhFK (p104)
https://imgur.com/jR9QgPP (p105)
https://imgur.com/mSuD9De (p106)
https://imgur.com/6ICmdVm (p107)
https://imgur.com/BPT0Xi8 (p108)
https://imgur.com/MVCvqal (p109)
https://imgur.com/11hUuqm (p110)
https://imgur.com/1Qsg45l (p111)
https://imgur.com/WLj0h7l (p112)

Source

---

Excellent reference. Darwin was proposing a theory without all the evidence from the fossil record, but a theory that fit well with the evidence from more recent species such as humans or turtles and so forth. And many biologists follow this general theory of evolution based on more recent tangible evidence of speciation and evolution all the while acknowledging the gaps and difficulties with the ancient record. (I personally find it highly unlikely that anybody will have all the data to understand what happened 500 million years ago in biological evolution. That is too much a gap in time, not to mention the 500 million years preceding it.) That said, I don't see it as "bad" or "wrong" for science to try to reconstruct what took place based on "material" evidence that is available to formulate hypotheses.

---

Posts: 43015 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug:
That said, I don't see it as "bad" or "wrong" for science to try to reconstruct what took place based on "material" evidence that is available to formulate hypotheses.

---

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

The Placebo Effect: How It Works

...

The placebo effect is not deception, fluke, experimenter bias, or statistical anomaly. It is, instead, a product of expectation. The human brain anticipates outcomes, and anticipation produces those outcomes. The placebo effect is self-fulfilling prophecy, and it follows the patterns you'd predict if the brain were, indeed, producing its own desired outcomes. Researchers have found, for example:

• Placebos follow the same dose-response curve as real medicines. Two pills give more relief than one, and a larger capsule is better than a smaller one.
• Placebo injections do more than placebo pills.
• Substances that actually treat one condition but are used as a placebo for another have a greater placebo effect that sugar pills.
• The greater the pain, the greater the placebo effect. It's as if the more relief we desire, the more we attain.
• You don't have to be sick for a placebo to work. Placebo stimulants, placebo tranquilizers, even placebo alcohol produce predictable effects in healthy subjects.

---

quote:

---

Is the Placebo Effect Real?

The placebo effect when people taking so-called "dummy pills" begin to experience the side effects expected for the real pills is a controversial phenomenon that seems to show that when it comes to some things, it really is mind over matter.

---

quote:

---

Sham Surgery Can healing take place without treatment?

In 2004, a radiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, one of the American’s most prestigious hospitals, named Dr. David Kallmes decided to try a bizarre experiment. For many years, he had been performing an operation called a vertebroplasty, in which broken backs are healed through the injection of a medical cement. The procedure had always been very successful, relieving severe pain and allowing people to walk and exercise without difficulty. However, one thing had always puzzled Dr. Kallmes: that occasionally the operation would go wrong (for example, if cement was injected into the wrong vertebra) but patents would still appear to get better.

In order to investigate this further, Kallmes conducted a trial of 131 patients where half of them would receive a real vertebroplasty, and the others would have a fake operation. In the latter, patients were wheeled into the operating theatre and given an anesthetic but rather than being injected with the cement, they were simply pressed hard on the back. The results found that both groups experienced the same amount of pain relief, and the same amount of improvement in function, that is, in walking, climbing stairs, and other forms of exercise.

This is an aspect of the placebo effect known as “sham surgery.” This is when surgeons literally pretend to do an operation, doing everything they would normally do - for example, making an incision, picking up instruments, giving instructions to colleagues, then closing the incision - but without actually making an intervention. Although this seems to defy common sense, many other trials of sham surgery have had positive results. In a Finnish study published in 2013, sham surgery was performed on patients suffering from torn knee ligaments, and in severe pain. Even though the sham surgery patients were anesthetized, surgeons went through the whole ritual of an operation in meticulous detail, passing instruments and making the normal sounds associated with an operation. But again, the incision was closed without any procedure being carried out. Some patients received real treatment too, and the results were compared. Once again, no significant difference was found between them. Patients who had had sham surgery reported the same degree of pain relief and improved function.

---

quote:

---

The weird power of the placebo effect, explained
Yes, the placebo effect is all in your mind. And it’s real.

...

“The placebo effect is the most interesting phenomenon in all of science,” Mogil says. “It’s at the precise interface of biology and psychology,” and is subject to everything from the drug ads we see to our interactions with health care providers to the length of a clinical trial.

...

For millennia, doctors, caregivers, and healers had known that sham treatments made for happy customers. Thomas Jefferson himself marveled at the genius behind the placebo. “One of the most successful physicians I have ever known has assured me that he used more bread pills, drops of colored water, powders of hickory ashes than of all other medicines put together,” Jefferson wrote in 1807. “It was certainly a pious fraud.”

...

Studies show that post-operative patients whose painkillers are distributed by a hidden robot pump at an undisclosed time need twice as much drug to get the same pain-relieving effect as when the drug is injected by a nurse they could see. So awareness that you’re being given something that’s supposed to relieve pain seems to impact perception of it working.

...

The research also suggests that fake surgeries — where doctors make some incisions but don’t actually change anything — are an even stronger placebo than pills. A 2014 systematic review of surgery placebos found that the fake surgery led to improvements 75 percent of the time. In the case of surgeries to relieve pain, one meta-review found essentially no difference in outcomes between the real surgeries and the fake ones.

There is such thing as the nocebo effect: where negative expectations make people feel worse. Some researchers think this is what’s fueling the gluten-free diet fad. People have developed a negative expectation that eating gluten will make them feel bad. And so it does, even though they may not have any biological gluten sensitivity.

...

Pharmacological conditioning
This is where things get a little weird.

Colloca has conducted many studies where for several days, a patient will be on a drug to combat pain or deal with the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Then one day, she’ll surreptitiously switch the patient over to a placebo. And lo and behold, they still feel healing effects.

On that fifth day, it seems the placebo triggers a similar response in the brain as the real drug. “You can see brain locations associated with chronic pain and chronic psychiatric disease” acting like there are drugs in the system, she says. For instance, Colloca has found that individual neurons in the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease will still respond to placebos as though they are actual anti-Parkinson’s drugs after such conditioning has taken place.

---

quote:

---

The placebo effect is present in every medical intervention

A recently published study declared that 97% of 783 GPs admitted that they had recommended a sugar pill or a treatment with no established efficacy. This is not a scandal because a placebo is an effective, proven intervention that stimulates our bodies' own capacity to heal itself.

The placebo effect is present in every medical intervention, not just those procedures, such as sugar pills, where the placebo effect is the only known agent at work. To understand exactly how it works would be the equivalent of understanding in full how our mind influences our physical heath, and I expect we still have plenty more to discover in that area.

...

In 1955, the inventor of the double-blind design form of testing, Henry K Beecher, discovered that 35% of patients found satisfactory relief from a placebo. It is thought that a contributing factor of the effectiveness of the placebo is the reputation, charisma and convictions of the doctor administrating it, as these affect a patient's belief system. In Beecher's study, this might have been missing, because the dispenser of the drug would have known that the drug might just be a sugar pill – so this 35% may be a conservative estimate of the efficacy of placebo.

These days, when testing the placebo effect, we can get the MRI scanner in on the act. Tor D Wager conducted a study in 2004 with a placebo cream he told the subjects would take away pain. He then inflicted pain on them and watched them in the scanner. Those who had been given the cream (the control group had nothing) showed "placebo effect patterns" in the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain activates when anticipating pain relief and triggers a reduction of activity in pain-sensing areas of the brain. Wager suggests that this interplay within the prefrontal cortex may also trigger a release of pain-relieving opioids in the midbrain.

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
Odd how Doug is calling a creationist book an excellent reference

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
You are wasting time by attacking individuals. Either you can show us a legitimate link Egyptian words and Wolof or you can't

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
The placebo effect is one mind-related phenomenon in a long line, that rocks the worldview of mainstream science.

---

Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,:
You are wasting time by attacking individuals. Either you can show us a legitimate link Egyptian words and Wolof or you can't

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,

I feel you and strongly cosign your energy

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the lioness,

peace

---

Posts: 43015 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by sam p:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
The placebo effect is one mind-related phenomenon in a long line, that rocks the worldview of mainstream science.

---

Eventually we're going to find out that almost all disease is communicable and we each have the germs that cause almost every disease. We get sick when we expect to get sick or think we deserve to get sick. We get sick when are defenses are down or our spirits are down.

The doctor's job has always been to reassure the patient and "trick" him into getting better.

Obviously this doesn't necessarily apply to any individual case of anything. while arthritis is likely several different types of viruses if one abuses his joints long enough one or another of them is almost certain to multiply and make him sick.

I had one doctor tell me not to worry about a condition making another condition worse because as a rule an individual can have only one life threatening condition at a time.

I believe almost nothing we all take for granted or take as established science is real except from specific perspectives.


Oh, and thanks Lioness for correcting my blunder.

---

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Swenet:
Thanks, Doug. For helping to provide information so truth-seekers can investigate and make up their own mind. The lectures you posted need to be pushed to the forefront to balance things out as far as what the major outlets are trying to push.

---

Posts: 8901 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Modern humans are characterized by specialized hand morphology that is associated with
advanced manipulative skills. Thus, there is important debate in paleoanthropology about
the possible cause–effect relationship of this modern human-like (MHL) hand anatomy,
its associated grips and the invention and use of stone tools by early hominins. Here we
describe and analyse Olduvai Hominin (OH) 86, a manual proximal phalanx from the recently
discovered 1.84-million-year-old (Ma) Philip Tobias Korongo (PTK) site at Olduvai Gorge
(Tanzania). OH 86 represents the earliest MHL hand bone in the fossil record, of a size
and shape that differs not only from all australopiths, but also from the phalangeal bones
of the penecontemporaneous and geographically proximate OH 7 partial hand skeleton
(part of the Homo habilis holotype). The discovery of OH 86 suggests that a hominin with a
more MHL postcranium co-existed with Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis at Olduvai during
Bed I times.

---

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8987

As always, the fossils don't line up the way it's predicted by the scientific establishment.



IMO the most important findings of this paper are as follows. 1) AMH-like humans CO-EXISTED with archaics, already 1.84my ago, 2) the archaic humans that were around back then (e.g. OH 7) were already distinct from the beginning, not ancestral, and 3) despite being 1.84my old, this fossil is already more modern human than Neanderthals (our supposed close cousins).

This does not mean that the authors agree with what I think this means in the big scheme. But even they have to admit that AMH-like features go back to the beginning of the Homo clade ~2my ago.




Alternative tree with habilis and rudolfensis (whose positions in the human tree are debated)

If the authors were honest with themselves they would admit that gradualism can't explain human origins. But, it is what it is.

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tukuler:
Hahaha the tree is a bush entangled with creeping vines!
And so the use of overlapping timelines instead of a phylograph.
I dunno, my readings lead me to believe there are human (homo) origins

---

I agree, I shouldn't have said tree. They are timelines, and they are a more honest and professional way plotting these fossils than phylogenetic trees.

If you ever find the time to do a write up clarifying that (human origins), PM me and let me know. I was especially interested in Lioness comeback, but any observations you may have (on this paper, and subject in general) are appreciated.

Here is another interesting part of the paper. I always keep my eyes open for anything that seems off as far as deliberate bias. Notice that they stacked the samples with monkeys and apes, but only used one archaic human (Kebara 2). Lol. Looks like they're playing it safe by not testing more rigorously for specific affinities.

[edit: misread the quotes] I thought they were using the comments at the end explain why they didn't used the erectus samples, but they're explaining why they can't assign OH 83 to erectus



Now their reasoning confuses me even more. According to their own analysis, OH 83 is closer to sapiens than Neanderthals are to sapiens (see fig S4 and S5). We also know from palaeontology that Neanderthals were genetically far closer to sapiens than erectus and their tools overlap more with sapiens tools than erectus tools do. IMO that precludes erectus from being a candidate population for OH 83 (since OH 83 is relatively close to sapiens). But if they entertain that possibility, they should have tested it using all available archaic human samples, but that is exactly what they didn't do.

Posts: 8791 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged |